The Cave of Mary Magdalene is set high in the cliff face beneath the rising Sun. According to legend, Mary Magdalene dwelt here in this Cave as a teacher and healer for thirty years.

The Cave of Mary Magdalene, high up in the side of a Provencal mountain, is a doorway into sacred space. It symbolizes the doorway which exists within you now, between the outer and inner Life. In Hebrew the name Magdalene means inner strength, and the protective space in which creativity can take place. The space of conscious meeting for formless spirit and universal formation.

The figure of Mary Magdalene represents the feminine consciousness within us all, both women and men, that desires to be fully alive, to awaken to our true nature, and realize our creative potential.

To enter within your innermost Self, listen with your whole body. Hear the silence, and the songs arising out of that timeless silence. Breathe consciously, and feel the still Presence out of which creative life is continually arising, as this moment, now.

Breathe with the Sun and the Earth, breathe with the forests and the Oceans. Breathe with the stars in the night sky.

Through engendering Love, compassion, and empathy in the human collective, parasitical thought forms from the egocentric mind cannot pollute or drain life from the world around us, nor destroy the new born spiritual awakening which is now taking root in the New Humanity.

Despite the negativity that we see and hear through politics and the media, there has never been a greater opportunity to awaken to the beauty of the universal consciousness that flows through every living thing, and that is available for us to step into right now, wherever we are.

This potential to awaken to the Bright Light of the Spirit is within the heart of every Woman and Man. It is a rebirth that takes us into the intensity of Life in the present moment.

The intense creative Presence of the fullness of life is timeless, calling us to awaken and join with the rest of creation in shared abundance: in a greater community where we join with all of our fellow species as companions.

To take this path is not avoidance of the human world, and all of the unnecessary suffering that so much psychological ignorance is causing at this time. Spirituality is not a way of enhancing the ego, making you richer and more successful or a better person than others. Spiritual awakening is to be inclusive, to consciously embrace multi-dimensional and diversifying Life, and live this Life fully.

To enter within the depths of the human Spirit is to leave behind the baggage of mental noise, to leave our stories, histories and narratives about who we are and what we need.

Be still and enter the contemplative silence of no-mind: the suspension of all thought. Be conscious that the spiritual dimension is here within you now, in your breath and in your blood.

It is only the unobserved mind and all its compulsive thought forms that separates us from the Malkut HaShamaim.

Malkut HaShamaim is translated as the Kingdom of Heaven. In Hebrew it means the formless Source of dynamic infinite potential, the unified field of every possible form of Life, beyond all our conceptions of time and space.

In Kabbalah this Source is sometimes called the Brilliance of Life: Bahir and Zohar are Hebrew words which seek to express the inner Fire – the essence of all Life, Source of every Woman and Man, and every living thing.

The essence of Kabbalah is to receive Life, which means to still the mind and become silent within. This creates a conscious vessel, a sacred space which receives the fire of life, and the realisation of connection to the abundance of this multi-dimensional universe, which is always here, now.

Love is another word for Consciousness, and it has no opposite. Love is a state of non-duality, where we cannot hate or be indifferent, cannot hide or lie, nor be afraid of and seek to control Life.

We are One with all that the mind interprets as the outside world

When you are consciously present the whole universe can be felt as alive within you.

Mary Magdalene is the feminine face of fully realized Humanity, called Christ consciousness in biblical Greek. In the external world, she appears to have lost everything. She is an exile, a refugee, a woman who has witnessed the worst of human cruelty, the beginning of the war that will lay waste to her homeland. Yet she has found the certainty of the spiritual universe within herself, she lives and breathes it and teaches it to those around her.

We all have this same ability to connect with the spiritual universe and this opportunity is open to us now. It is not a future that we need to wait for.

When we choose to be present, we are joining the greater community of life. This means we are no longer enslaved by, the unconscious human mind. Our first step to true liberation and peace is realizing that we can step outside of the unobserved human mind, see the madness of the human world and not be overwhelmed by it. You too can tap into this creative spiritual dimension that frees you, by becoming conscious now. And if not now, when?

Put your conscious attention into the base of the spine, the coccyx, and feel it supported in the Earth.

Feel the fullness of the spine rising up, shooting forth like a tree, its rootedness in the earth. As the awareness rises up the spine, the roots mirror the trunk, spreading out and down into the earth beneath your feet.

The trunk puts forth branches into the air, leafing leaf, budding, fruiting, and you are breathing from the base, opening up the trunk into the solar plexus and the heart, opening out through the 6 directions with each breath.

Inhabiting your space.

With each conscious breath, your conscious attention in this moment now, become aware of the vitality already present in the spine, in the body. This energy radiates out through the six directions, encompassing the Earth, the Moon, and the planets, pulsating life coming out of the core, from the timeless, formless essence of who you are.

This is the essential part of you that never moves and never speaks; the part of you that is always present and always creative. An intense aliveness, burning through the mists of the unobserved mind, rising in splendour like the Sun. Through your attention, in this moment, now, consciousness enters into the world, which is the inner meaning of Yisrael, to rise in splendour, as the Sun: To become conscious of being conscious.

If your mind wanders into any thought streams, bring your attention back into this moment, focusing on the real.

The real is the pulsation of life, arising from the core of who you are. You are suspended in deep space; the planet is floating beneath you, held within the field of consciousness or gravity that gathers into its center, the Star in which we move, around the outer arm of the galaxy, the galaxy which is also spinning around its axis, its spinal cord, its point of vanishing.In Hebrew the vanishing point is Daath, the 11th dimension. We are multi-dimensional beings, inhabiting a multi-dimensional universe, and all the creatures that inhabit it with us are also multi-dimensional. There is nothing that does not come from the Spirit of the Breath of Life.

Bereshit

Bereshit in Hebrew is the creative imminence of Aleph, the intangible no-thing, and the essence of all, here but not-here, continually emerging and disappearing, a unified field of multiple centers out of which all life continually arises.

Aleph is carried up on the fire of the Breath, the Shin, birthing itself as a trillion, trillion stars, countless sub-atomic particles, countless centers of consciousness, each a Yod, a seeding seed. Every possible possibility, infinite potential, is here, now, within you.

And when you breathe consciously you are not just taking in oxygen, but the Spirit of the Breath, which feeds you on all levels, and it is this formless presence that pushes out to the surface of Life through the 6 directions, manifesting your mind and through mind, your body.The body will pass away, and so too the mind, but consciousness has no time and no place. It is sometimes called all times and all places. All are One. It is the deathless, the Eternal, no time, no past, no future, only the imminent potential of creative life force, which can only occur in this moment now.

Messianic consciousness

Messianic consciousness is the full realisation of this infinite potential as human – Being. In ancient Greek this is Christos, and it is here now, awaiting our conscious meeting, as told in the story of Mary the Magdalene, who represents the fortified conduit, or tower, between the Divine, the formless Spirit, into form or mind, and which manifests what appears to the mind as the solidity of the body and the outer worlds of appearances.

The outer world of appearances is something like 97% space, so the miracle is that anything appears solid at all, as it blows like an ephemeral mist, passing in and out of form continuously, until the Spirit moves beyond the form, and the form, the persona, dissolves leaving the essence of who and what you are: Consciousness in human form.

To realize the fullness of Life is not a future happening, it is here now in potential, already unfolding. It ‘Is’ before your birth, and before your death or any rebirth, and will be here after you have ceased to come in and out of matter, in your belief that you are a separate entity from the universe around you.

Bereshit bara Elohim, et ha-shamain vay et ha-eretz.

The creative, the intense pressure of creativity, is pouring through every cell, every sub-atomic particle. It is in every breath, in your blood and bones, in your flesh and sinew. It is in your words and movements, and it is full of every thing you need to complete your part in the work: Brimming over, into form, into matter.

The meaning of life is to be fully alive.

This is what it means to be the pregnant Virgin. The pregnant Virgin is the messianic consciousness that Mary Magdalene represents: she who is continually pregnant with creative life. She who is – continually dissolving her past, letting go of her history, and embracing her potential, as the present moment.

She who writes the book of life, the new-born, giving birth continuously, nurturing life continuously. She who is the Wise Woman, the receptive giver, the holder of the conduit of consciousness between Heaven and Earth, knowing that the Kingdom of Heaven is within, and here now, open within you. She who is – the weaver of the basket of Moses, the Ark of Noah.

In Hebrew Noah means to be still, and Noah is called Yalad in Hebrew, which means the midwife, and the New-born; continuously new-born, continuously mid-wifing, aiding the birth of new life, witnessing the birth of new life, in every star, in every galaxy, nurturing the young.

Infant stars

In galaxies there are nurseries and in each star, there are different types of solar systems, primary and secondary formations of Life.

Take a conscious breath, be still, in which all thought subsides, just feel the timelessness of the creative. Feel it in your blood and bones, in your breath, in your heart-beat, in your hands and fingers, your feet and toes, your legs and arms, your back and breasts, Feel it in the spine, the gut, the internal organs, in the coccyx, in the genitals.

Feel it radiating up the spine. This is the Magdala, opening through the solar plexus, opening through the heart, the throat, opening through the pineal gland.

Now put your conscious attention into the left hemisphere of your brain, breathe into it, and then bring that attention across into your right hemisphere. Holding that awareness in the right mind, feeling the pineal gland behind the forehead at the top of the spine, connected directly with the heart, with the solar plexus, with your creative energy that is upwelling, the mythical eternal spring.The same intense energy that birthed you into form and matter is here within you now, and all our fellow creatures gather together, finding their nesting places, finding the nurturing creativity where they feel welcome, and able to be, and able to sustain the life of the world.

As you gather into your centre on the inbreath, your radiate on the out-breath through the six directions, and the more centred you are, the more fully you can be present in the world.

The Seed of Life

It is the Magdalene, who brings, continuously, in this timeless Presence, the Messianic consciousness through into form and matter.

So listen, listen to the silence and feel the stillness. Hear the music of the spheres, the music of the stars, and feel the planets resonate through you, as you resonate through them. Feel the sun awakening within you, as you awaken within the sun.

A meaning of the name Elohim.

You are now co-creating as Aleph, Lamed, Hey, Yod, Mem. No-thing and All, moving into life, following the creative patterns that are already laid before you and carrying the seed of timeless infinite potential, into the spaciousness of the womb of space.

We light the Menorah, the representation of the Tree of Life, Etz Haim, and we are lighting it for humanity and for all our fellow creatures. But it is humanity that needs it more than any other, because all others creatures are rooted in the Divine, in the Universe of Spirit.

Humanity has forgotten its instructions, Humanity has drifted without a rudder, and we are here to join with all the other creatures in birthing the new age of humanity. Adam means universal humanity, and Heva means the Great Circle of Life, which humanity knows itself by consciously embracing. Adam as Heva is the embracing of this circle: The community of life.

So it is through this feminine power that spirituality is rebirthing, the newness of life, which creativity demands.

Listen with all of your attention. Breathe with awareness. Hear the silence.

Feel the still Presence, take in your surroundings. Realise that you are a still point in that creative Presence, floating in spaciousness and anchored in the Earth, and in your body, which is as spacious as the cosmos.

You are the Tree of Life in human form, a microcosmic reflection of the Universe. To begin to realise this is to consciously inhabit your body, and to live within awareness of non-duality.

This wonderful artwork by Melissa Martinez called Getting to know… Tree of Life, Sacred Geometry – utilizing the hand-drawn diagram below from the book Patterns of Creation, depicts beautifully the inner reality of the Tree of Life. Every Woman and Man is a Tree of Life – a microcosm of the Universe in human form.

The word for tree in ancient Hebrew is Etz. This word is deeply significant and has three profound meanings. It signifies firstly the totality of multi-dimensional life, in all its beauty and diversity: The World Tree, consciousness beholding consciousness through the diversity of everything that exists.

The second meaning is spinal cord. This takes us beyond the vertebrae and the skeletal structure of the physical body. It refers to the central axis of your entire spiritual, physical and psychological being, your vitality, right down to the cellular level.

The third meaning is “building blocks” – the building blocks of life, not only that which is visible and tangible, but the deep underlying structures at the cellular and atomic levels.

The Tree of Life is not a theory, something to believe in, or that needs to be endlessly discussed. It is our spiritual reality, our wholeness, connecting us directly with the life of the physical body, and the life of the Earth and all our fellow creatures.

To truly realise Etz Ha-Haim – The Tree of Life – bring all of your attention to this abundant vitality of life within. This vitality has its source in the formless Spiritual dimension at your core, and continually creates your mind and body, out of the timeless Present Moment.

Sit or stand quietly and breathe with awareness, breathing from the base of the spine so that the breath deepens naturally.

Enjoy the feelings of increasing aliveness, following the breath as it enters and leaves the body. Through each conscious breath you are connecting with the vitality of Life – both inner and outer – in all its magnificent diversity. From here you enter space without thought, simply being present.

Through conscious breathing, and enjoying the vitality that continually creates and sustains the body, the mind becomes still. Silent space opens within; inner and outer merge, are realised as One. Through the practice of the Conscious Breath of Life, realisation comes that you are a multi-dimentional being, connected to every living thing in the natural world, the solar system, and the Cosmos.

“You are a Tree of Life, a living vine, connected to all that is unfolding in the natural world, the solar system and stars. You have within you the water and the wine, and beyond these symbols of form and Spirit, the light of consciousnes that continually gives birth to, and sustains, Creation.” From the book Patterns of Creation. Logos and the Tree of Life in the Gospel of John.

At your heart, you are rooted in the Eternal Present – I Am, timeless Now – out of which everything is created, formed and made into the life of the Cosmos.

The Tree of Life represents the still and silent spaciousness out of which the creativity of Universal Life continually emerges. This is always accessible to you. It is only through identification with the thought forms in the unobserved mind that you lose connection with timeless creative space. With its addiction to drama and crisis, the unobserved mind is always trying to make one problem after another. Then the spiritual dimension seems remote and inaccessible, and you feel disconnected from life.

As you practice conscious breathing, movement and speaking in daily life, you open the possibility to consciously choose to be free from the collective and individual negative thought forms that torment us, and drain our life. Breathing and being present in all the little things of daily life, through all these seemingly insignificant routines and gestures, gives back the freedom of creative space.

Then you realize that in reality creative space has never left you. You are the Tree of Life in human form.

“Be still (become silent within – no mind)

And know (as revelation)

The I that is Elohim (Presence – The Unity of Life).

Elohim will raise up (spiritually awaken) unconscious humanity.

Elohim exalts the whole created Earth.”

Psalm 46:10 (My translation from the Hebrew).

What is the “I” that is Elohim?

The Hebrew letters Elohim are a meditation, and have always been mistranslated as God. But Elohim is not, and never has been, a deity. To experience the “I that is Elohim” directly is one of the most profound mystical teachings in the Bible.

Take a conscious breath: be aware of the spine, let it be straight but not tense, with each conscious breath you are allowing the soles of the feet to connect with the Earth. Consciously connecting with the Earth, allowing it to support you, deepens the Presence in which the mind becomes still and silent.

Be aware, that as the spine relaxes, it elongates: you are allowing space between the vertebrae from the coccyx to the cranium. As you breathe out, be aware of the space before the in-breath, a pause that allows the breath to draw in naturally, without effort. As your shoulders and arms release tension, the chest opens, so that you feel space opening out from your centre, around the heart and solar-plexus.

The Tree of Life showing the sacred geometry of life through the six directions of space. (Hand-drawn diagram from the book Patterns of Creation.)

Once you gain a deeper sense of inner stillness, become aware that Elohim – Presence -Unifying field of Life; Source of your Being – connects you with the whole of created existence.

This eternal Presence radiates from deep within you, through the six directions of space.

This radiant Spirit is everywhere, in everything, the Source of all life.

From a greater awareness of life expressing itself in diversity on the Earth, become aware of your connection with the planets in the Solar system.

The Earth and its Moon exist in symbiotic relationship as part of the great dance of life.

Be aware of the central point of the Solar system – the Sun – and through the Sun, your connection with the galaxy and the entire Cosmos. Everything is alive, everything is being breathed into existence.

What we view in the sky is the core of the Sun. We live within the radiant body of the Sun, our physical bodies are made from the energy of the Sun and other stars.

As you breathe in, bring this awareness back to the center within you, beyond body and mind, beyond form. As you release the breath, be aware of the formless creative Spirit that breathes you: be aware that you are being breathed.

Elohim is the timeless source of all life, out of which you are continually created. As your awareness of the I that is Elohim increases, the sense of an egocentric “I” and “mine” begins to diminish.

You are the living breath of the Universe in human form.

Breathe consciously, allow the conscious breath to carry you on your journey through life, with, and as, the creative pulse of life.

The universe is breathing you, and when you are conscious of the Eternal timeless Presence, the I that is Elohim, the universal breath flows through you.

Bereshith

בְּרֵאשִׁית

These six Hebrew ciphers (letter-numbers) that form Bereshith open the Torah. They are a profound meditation on creation and creativity.

Bereshith is a meditation on the creativity of a multi-dimensional Universe; the creativity of the totality of Life.

All creativity, and the universal creation, take place here, in this moment, now.

From out of silent stillness, all movement – space-time – continually emerges, becoming multiplicity of forms that continually pass away into the formless essence from whence they came.

Behind the continual emergence of form is great power, beyond anything that the mind can conceive. Creativity, the continual creation of life is within you, in every conscious breath that you take.

You are the universal song of life in human form, the great dance in all of its potential.

When you still the mind, and in that inner silence, feel this reality within you, it appears to you as the essence of every form, dancing around you, and you feel that same dance within you.

Bereshith is the Eternal Present Moment out of which Creativity continually emerges, to become what the mind experiences as form and matter.

Beneath the Surface there is no object – only a communion of subjects.

In Bereshith all subject object relationships dissolve into union.

In Bereshith both past and future are consumed into the Presence of The Now. Every creative act takes place in the Present Moment, which is timeless, formless, space.

When you breathe consciously, with awareness of the universal life force that manifests your mind and body, you are entering that Eternal Presence, the Essence of every form of Life.

This meditation can only convey something of what the Hebrew letters of Bereshith point to. If you would like to further explore the depth of meaning contained in the Hebrew letters, you can read my other post on Bereshith here.

Every moment of every day we are surrounded by intense beauty, which blazes forth from everything that appears to us as the external world. To feel this intense depth of life, become consciously present to this same lifeforce welling up from deep within you.

How can we cut ourselves off from the Earth that sustains our physical life?

How can we cut ourselves off from space, the solar system and the stars, that sustain our life, and through which we journey when we leave our physical body, and return to our spiritual home that is not built of matter but of what we experience through the physical senses as light?

Many years ago, I began to experience the Light of Consciousness, just as my life opened out, and I moved to the beautiful mountainous area of North Wales on the edge of the Snowdonia national park. In this elemental place, this Presence grew stronger in me. I lived where mountains sloped down to meet the sea, and the constant changing light and sunsets melted into the open horizon.

There I began to experience the essence of life behind the thin veil of physicality, in the living rock, in the woodlands and forests with their flowers, birds, animals and insects, and in the rivers and waterfalls swelling the abundance of life. I began to feel how all physical existence comes out of light, and how light shapes and holds all the diverse beauty of the natural world.

Light is consciousness of Being made manifest in the Cosmos. The Light of Consciousness lives and breathes the rhythms and cycles of planets and stars, and they give life to the Earth in all its diversifying forms. Constant movement and change held by the still silence, that is the essence of life.

You are a Tree of Life rooted in the Stillness of the One,

connected to all that is unfolded in the Vast Cosmos,

the Solar System, and the Natural World.

Breathe and be Present to the vitality of Life flowing through you: This is the Love of Elohim.

Depiction of the Tree of Life, within the Vesica Piscis. The diagram comes from the book Patterns of Creation.

Everything is connected and comes from one formless, timeless, Source.

We can call this Eternal Presence.

In Biblical Hebrew this is expressed in the meditation Ehieh Asher Ehieh, the mantra on the conscious breath –

אֶֽהְיֶה אֲשֶׁר אֶֽהְיֶה

Usually translated I Am that I Am.

This I Am has nothing to do with the persona or ego, which is the identification with mind-made images, our thoughts and emotions, both personal and in the human collective.

Ehieh Asher Ehieh takes us deeper, beyond the thinking mind.

Be still, be consciously receptive, and in the silence of no-mind, come to know Eternal Conscious Presence.

As you read this now, breathe consciously, feel the aliveness in your hands, in your feet, your arms and legs, and in your whole body, in every cell of your body. Feel the aliveness in your spinal cord connecting spirit and body into a unified whole.

You are one with the Source of all Life.

This is not a thought or a concept, it is beyond the comprehension of the mind.

From the conscious breath and the awakening to the aliveness in the body, realise there are two movements of the universe.

The inward towards stillness deep within the heart, and the outward into form and diversity of the One.

Practice the embodiment of the inward and outward movements of the breath throughout your day, this frees you from identification with thoughts and brings you into spacious Presence.

אֶֽהְיֶה

Ehieh is the still, silent space that allows the light of consciousness to shine through. This is an awakening in which consciousness becomes aware of itself – as itself: there is no subject – object, no duality, no other to be sought after.

Know that you are given life in this moment now, that you are continually supported by the One universal consciousness – Ehieh Asher Ehieh.

Be present, here, now, with all your attention.

This Presence will flow into all that you do and say – no more fear and anxiety, no more competitive actions or harsh words.

Saturday the 19th and Sunday 20th of September 2015

The Kabbalah

Awakening to Unity

with Stephen Pope

“At your core is your spiritual Being. It is accessible to you now. This is the essence of Kabbalah.”

Kabbalah teaches that the spiritual dimension is not distant or separate. It is present within us right now, as the core of our being and the Essence of who we really are. Only our mind-made sense of separation and fear keep us from awakening to the direct experience of Unity and Peace with all life.

Like the mystics and shamans of every culture, as we awaken spiritually, we make the mystical, journeys of ascent into the formless heavenly realities, and descent into the life of the body and the natural world and know them both as aspects of the One Creation.

This weekend we will work with some of the most powerful gateways to spiritual awakening – expanding awareness through meditation and the conscious breath, awakening the vital energy of the body and connecting with the animal spirits and the living Earth.

From this comes true freedom, as we transcend the mind dominated by ego to know our Unity with all life and realize the Peace and Stillness of Sacred Presence at our core.

A practicing mystic in the Kabbalistic tradition for over thirty years and a meditation teacher for the past 20 years, Steve Pope has a B.D and MA in Theology and translates Greek and Hebrew Biblical texts. His book Patterns of Creation –Axis Mundi Books, June 2012. Is a radical and acclaimed exploration of the mystical teachings in the Gospel of John.

Please book in advance. Price includes accommodation and all meals £165

You can join us for this companion Friday evening session as well at a special price with two nights accommodation £190

The Heart of the Wild

7 – 9pm on Friday 18th September

with Eleanor O’Hanlon and Stephen Pope

The mystical and shamanic traditions teach that all life is conscious, interconnected and whole and we humans can commune with the spirits of minerals, plants, animals and the Earth itself. Western science and religious dogma broke that connection between humans and other life.

But now western science and shamanic teachings have begun to meet – many leading researchers in animal behaviour have come to see animals as conscious individuals that can choose to interact and commune with us.

Award-winning author Eleanor O’Hanlon speaks about this recent revolution and shares her own experiences of intimate connection with wild creatures from the desert elephants and rhinos of Namibia to the gray whales in Baja California. And with guided meditation, Stephen Pope takes us deeper into direct experience of inner connection with the animal spirits and the living Earth.

Eleanor O’Hanlon is a writer and conservationist. Her book Eyes of the Wild won the 2014 Nautilus Gold Award for Nature Writing. http:www.eyesofthewild.org